IJSSIR, Vol. 12, No. 01. January 2023

(1)

IJSSIR, Vol. 12, No. 01. January 2023

169

ISSN 2277-3630 (online), Published by International journal of Social Sciences &

Interdisciplinary Research., under Volume: 12 Issue: 01 in January-2023 https://www.gejournal.net/index.php/IJSSIR

visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ESP AND STUDENTS' NEEDS IN LEARNING ENGLISH FOR PHARMACY Talipov Begzod Botirovich,

EFL Teacher, Institute of pharmaceutical education and research Akhmedova Dilnoza Anvarovna ,

EFL Teacher, Institute of pharmaceutical education and research Toshkhonov Mahamadali Turdaliyevich,

PhD, docent, Uzbekistan State World languages University, The Department of Theoretical Sciences of the Spanish Language

Abstract: This article aims to discover the needs of pharmacy students at IPER as an input to design an ESP syllabus. The needs analyses were conducted by distributing questionnaires to and interviewing the respondents. The responses were analyzed based on a comprehensive concept of need analysis proposed by scholars. The findings showed that most students consider themselves poor in vocabulary and weak in speaking, listening, writing, and pronunciation. Hence, it is crucial to improve their skills to enable them from communicating effectively with foreign patients and avoiding misunderstanding which may happen when interacting with foreign patients. Therefore, developing an appropriate ESP syllabus for pharmacy and industrial pharmacy course could be possibly developed based on these findings and the theory of material development.

Keywords: needs analysis; pharmacy students; ESP; syllabus design, IPER

Introduction. English has been evolving as the working language in context. The specified learning focus of English in workplace context is under the umbrella of English for specific purposes (ESP). ESP is getting more popular since more English language programs are intended for the individuals who might want to learn English, which is applicable to their occupations. One of such occupations is pharmacy and industrial pharmacy at IPER. English mastery is badly needed to cope with the global change of the healthcare system. In this case, pharmaceutical science instruction should always be adjusted with the recent condition in society. As with the global Covid-19 pandemic, pharmacists belong to the front line to fight against the virus, and they are doing their best to support the patients despite their backgrounds and origins. Lack of English mastery will seriously affect their ability to provide service to their patients. Given the situation above, an area of specialized English learning should be well-arranged for pharmacy students. The scholar stated three differences between general English and ESP. Those are (1) objective-oriented learning activity, the students learn English is not because the language itself but also for specific goals in an academic and professional field, (2) the course content is designed and developed based on students' need analysis, and (3) it is especially proposed to adult learners. Besides, ESP is an effort or program which facilitates learners' needs in English to run a specific role. The examples are English for engineering, English for pharmacy, English for the nurse, English for midwifery, English for management, English for tourism, English or accounting, and other related English subjects. It does need appropriate and much-related content to a particular field. Based on the author's experience, the teaching of English for pharmacy as one of the English for Specific Course presents some challenges. Not only do the teachers have to deal with an extensive area of content knowledge, but it also deals with students' lack of English ability since typical classes consisted of mixed-abilities students. Another challenge is related to the course syllabus. Not many schools have provided the teachers with a complete syllabus with learning material and evaluation criteria. Several schools even left it for the teachers to arrange all the syllabus, methods, and evaluation. This practice will eventually present some problems since the schools cannot measure the expected learning outcomes for the students. In this view, the course evaluation should be conducted.

(2)

IJSSIR, Vol. 12, No. 01. January 2023

170

The primary goal of ESP classes at IPER is to provide targeted language instruction fulfill the students’ real communicative needs in various professional situations, in this case, teacher’s task to assist students to engage with their professional communities by providing the linguistic needs and they can be such as valuable feedbacks for syllabus design and improvements. Research investigating about this roles are many. The innovation was implemented as like kahoot, quizlet, hemis and moodle in order to improve the current syllabus and more effectively to accomplish the goals of English language teaching in this Institute. Although the current syllabus is relatively sufficient, according to the lecturers involved, it is not entirely practical in terms of topic arrangement and is apparently difficult to implement in classroom teaching. It is, therefore, essential for improvements on the syllabus to be made, so that a lack of suitability between the learner's needs and the items taught can be avoided, and both teachers and learners can work together towards mutual goals. Much research on needs analysis have been devoted on the area of pharmacy workers, science students, public and environment health, nurses all ground staffs, and tourism industry. In local context, needs analyses were used to investigate the language needs in travel agencies, maritime education, vocational college students. In addition, some concerns on ESP teaching in Uzbekistan were reflected in some research such as challenges in ESP in Uzbekistan, ESP teacher education model, issues and prospects of ESP, and ESP material development, and teacher identity in ESP material development.

Despite the various research on needs analysis in ESP and the crucial roles of healthcare professional in terms on pandemic, little attention has been given on needs analysis for English for Pharmacy. A study on this area is essential as it provides empirical data on students’ English competence, topics, and preferred learning activities. The data serve as the basic consideration for designing effective syllabus which can guarantee the achievable learning outcomes. This study aims to investigate the students' need analysis on English for the Pharmacy course, covering their personal information, current strength and weakness of English proficiency, the degree of importance of pharmacy skills/activities, and identification of topics that would interest them. In terms of investigating students' need analysis on English for pharmacy course, the followings are research questions proposed: a. How are the students' current strengths and weaknesses of English proficiency?

b. How is the degree of importance of pharmacy skills/activities? c. How is the identification of topics that would interest pharmacy students?

English at pharmacy institute. The study was conducted at IPER in Tashkent. In this article, the respondents are only from the pharmacy department. The vision of this institute is to manifest qualified national education, to create an academic culture which supports the adequate graduations in the health field with high morality, to have competent graduations as needed by the community, to produce research which contributes to the national development, to get contributive cooperation on developing knowledge in health field globally. This institution provides an English course in the even semester with two credits. This is a general basic course served to complete students' English skills, which emphasizes recognizing pharmaceutical terms. During the class, language aspects are integrated comprehensively due to the improvement of students' skills. The aspects are vocabulary, grammar, listening, reading, writing, and speaking. The learning objectives of this class are (1) students are able to enrich their knowledge in the pharmaceutical field, (2) students are able to improve their English skills by integrating language aspects completely, (3) students are able to implement their English skills for daily life.

Scholars stated that English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is defined to fulfill the specific needs of students. It uses both methodology and activities which underlie a particular field of study. It is also centralized to language activities such as lexis, grammar, passage, and genre. ESP for adults commonly has Basic English skills, and they are learning to communicate in relation to professional and career demands. The characteristic of ESP is to fulfill specific learning needs. Besides, ESP teaching methodology is appropriate with another language teaching model. In other words, ESP

(3)

IJSSIR, Vol. 12, No. 01. January 2023

171

shapes input, motivates students' desire in learning, manages learning strategy, and promotes its practices and uses in context.

ESP is defined as "an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner's reason for learning". ESP has a long history in the field of language teaching, in which it was started in the 1960s when the general English course could not meet the needs of language learners. There are three common to the emergence of ESP courses: the demands of Brave New World, a revolution in linguistics, and focus on the learner.

Scientists claimed that ESP is a movement based on the proposition that all language teachings should be tailored to the specific learning and language use needs for an identified group of learners and also sensitive to the socio-cultural context in which these learners will use English. ESP is generally known as a learner-centered approach, since it meets the needs of (mostly) adult learners who need to learn a foreign language use in their specific fields, such as nursing, pharmacy, science, technology, hospitality, academic learning, and other fields.

Linguist stated that the most prominent feature in ESP course design is that the syllabus based on an analysis of the students' needs because, in ESP, language is learned to equip the learners to enter a more specific linguistic environment.

Due to the above description, English for pharmacy is designed to provide students' knowledge of the pharmacy field. It is in line with the syllabus arranged by the lecturer. It covers English skills, such as speaking, reading, writing, and listening. However, it is not limited to them, because the learning activity is formulated also to improve their critical thinking and vocabulary mastery.

Needs analysis is generally considered the cornerstone of ESP course design. It is the basis of language learning programs, which leads to a focused language learning course and aid the development and improvement of the programs.

Scholars viewed needs analysis as a systematic collection and analysis of all relevant information that meets the language learning requirements of learners within the context of particular institutions involved in the learning situations. A needs analysis includes all the activities used to collect information about the students, learning needs, wants, etc. However, an issue in the students' needs analysis is that sometimes the students do not know what they actually need. Linguists pointed out that students often find it difficult to distinguish between the needs (the skills seen as being relevant to himself/herself) and wants (the desired competence). One of the ways to find the students' needs is by taking a survey or interviewing the teachers involved, as the teachers are more experienced than the students, and they also know better what the students' needs in order to be a professional English-speaking pharmacist. The process of needs analysis may also involve looking at the expectations and requirements of other interested parties such as administrators, patients, employers, and other people who may be impacted by the language program. Moreover, having an expert in ESP area as a consultant would also be very helpful to decide which the best is for the students. The information gained from a needs analysis can be used to help the curriculum or syllabus developer to define program goals. These goals can then be stated as specific teaching objectives, which in turn will function as the foundation to develop lesson plans, materials, tests, assignments, and activities.

Basically, a needs analysis serves as an aid to clarify the purposes of a language program. The syllabus, which is designed based on the students' needs, will have high relevance to what the students studied.

Conclusion

The conclusions of this article were (1) most of the students had already studied English for pharmacy since they finished from public school. However, following their English skills, they made some efforts to improve them, such as watching YouTube videos, reading English articles, and using English application to have autonomous learning. (2) Pronunciation and speaking skills seemed to be very weak among all. Based on these findings, it can be inferred that the expected curriculum to suit

(4)

IJSSIR, Vol. 12, No. 01. January 2023

172

the students’ lack should focus more on how to improve their speaking skills. The suitable methods which can boost students’ speaking is communicative methods where students utilize the language in a real context which is adjusted based on their expected future jobs. Regarding students’ weaknesses in pronunciation, there should be specific section in the textbook/module about pronunciation drills.

This can be integrated in the content and syllabus where students need to be able to speak with Received Pronunciation. (3) Communication activity looked to be very interesting for them to master.

It was based on the rank of activities that they considered very important. It was actually in line with the previous finding.

Since the most challenging English skill and students’ activity was speaking and communication, again the appropriate method to implement was communicative approach.

Sometimes the activity was not only by practicing dialog or conversation in pairs; it was possible to use some speaking applications on their smartphone to practice. Thus, the real and virtual situations could possibly assist and improve their communication activity. (4) There were twenty-three topics ranging from 50% and above as students need and want to be included in the English course syllabus.

Since a semester only had 15 meetings, the teacher should determine the order of the topics. It could be taken from the highest rank to the lowest as seen in table English teacher could use these findings as a starting point to develop the innovative syllabus. It matched with students' needs and their expectation toward the learning process. To perfect this article, the researcher also recommended further observation on another perspective from the teachers' side and professional pharmacist. After getting multiple perspectives on this needs analysis, the basis for developing an innovative syllabus will be excellent.

References

1. Cutting, J. (2012). English for airport ground staff. English for Specific Purposes, 31(1), 3–13.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2011.06.002

2. XALMURZAYEVNA, Y. S., & ZAIRJANOVICH, Y. S. (2020, June). PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF WRITTEN ADVERTISEMENTS FROM UZBEK NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES. In Archive of Conferences (Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 21-24).

3. Yuldashev, S. Z. (2021). MERITS AND DEMERITS OF ONLINE EDUCATION IN TRAINING COURSES (ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER’S COURSE). Academic research in educational sciences, 2(CSPI conference 2), 546-553.

4. XALMURZAYEVNA, Y. S., & ZAIRJANOVICH, Y. S. (2021, January). MODERN TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING LISTENING. In Archive of Conferences (pp. 3-4).

5. Yuldasheva, S., Eshmanov, G. A., Yuldashev, S., & Xidirova, M. (2021). TEACHING VOCABULARY-THE BASIS FOR FORMING FOUR MAIN SKILLS (LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING). Матеріали конференцій МЦНД.

6. Xalmurzayevna, Y. S., Eshmanov, G., Zairjanovich, Y. S., & Qizi, X. M. I. (2021). THE USAGE OF GROUP WORK IN TEACHING ENGLISH TO PRIMARY SCHOOL LEARNERS.

Conferencious Online, 86-88